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The Jew, smiling hideously, patted Oliver on the head,
and said, that if he kept himself quiet, and applied him-
self to business, he saw they would be very good friends
yet. Then, taking his hat, and covering himself with an old
patched great-coat, he went out, and locked the room-door
behind him.
And so Oliver remained all that day, and for the greater
part of many subsequent days, seeing nobody, between ear-
ly morning and midnight, and left during the long hours to
commune with his own thoughts. Which, never failing to
revert to his kind friends, and the opinion they must long
ago have formed of him, were sad indeed.
After the lapse of a week or so, the Jew left the room-door
unlocked; and he was at liberty to wander about the house.
It was a very dirty place. The rooms upstairs had great
high wooden chimney-pieces and large doors, with pan-
elled walls and cornices to the ceiling; which, although they
were black with neglect and dust, were ornamented in vari-
ous ways. From all of these tokens Oliver concluded that a
long time ago, before the old Jew was born, it had belonged
to better people, and had perhaps been quite gay and hand-
some: dismal and dreary as it looked now.
Spiders had built their webs in the angles of the walls
and ceilings; and sometimes, when Oliver walked softly
into a room, the mice would scamper across the floor, and
run back terrified to their holes. With these exceptions,
there was neither sight nor sound of any living thing; and
often, when it grew dark, and he was tired of wandering
from room to room, he would crouch in the corner of the